Without really knowing why, my reading these days consists primarily of philosophy-as-literature instead of straight-up fiction. Thinking about this it sounds kind of stupid, since all literature can in some sense be deemed philosophy. But still, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I have been sneaking off to read every chance I’ve gotten [...]
Also tagged Cocaine, Literature, Philosophy, Tarantino, TVThis week, due to time constraints and other nuisances, I have chosen to highlight Bent Sørensen’s excellent three part series on the Beat Generation, specifically, Beat ‘Others.’ It’s an interesting angle on an interesting movement; the role of women and colored people. In the course we had at U. of Copenhagen on American Literature and [...]
Also tagged American Studies, Blogs, LiteratureI am writing this after 8 hours of standing up and doing nothing, followed by 45 minutes of thrashing around on the squash court, getting humiliated by a curly Italian 3 years younger than me. So my nerves and reflexes are understandably shaken. What I need now is a beer and a book, and tonight [...]
Also tagged Binge Drinking, Literature, Movies, Philosophy“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”
Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Pardon the absence, but Portugal and Italy and I apparently did not equal any kind of efficiency. Back to the real world and hopefully an interesting season ahead of [...]
At LA Weekly there is a Q & A with the literary critic James Wood, who is under fire at the moment and has been for some time now. I am not completely up-to-date on the polemics surrounding Wood but the interview/Q & A is interesting as an entry point into the debacle. Wood, in [...]
Also tagged Belletristic, Criticism, Literature, Ménage a troisSummer is upon us, though the weather may not always be clear about this. There is nothing like being caught unawares in freezing rain wearing nothing but a tank top, shorts and worn flip-flops. This is what summer in Denmark is, and we like it. Summer also means beach reading, and sometimes train and plane [...]
Also tagged Column, Libary, Literature, Readings, Recommendations, SummerWhen hammering out that small piece on Hunter S. Thompson and Running, posted yesterday, I started thinking about the column he did for ESPN in his last years. Thompson called it a column, ESPN referred to it as a blog. I prefer the word column, for the same reason that there is something romantic about [...]
Also tagged bestseller, Blog, Column, Literature, Movies, TypewriterWhether one agrees or not, the notion of Queer Theory had a significant impact on literary studies in the eighties and nineties. The most famous (notorious?) book on the subject, though not the most exhaustive, was written by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and published in 1990. Epistemology of the Closet argued, in very broad terms, that [...]
Also tagged Column, Danish, Literature, Queer Theory, The Da Vinci CodeLate December, two years ago, in a joint effort by the University of Copenhagen and the literary/cultural venue Literaturhaus, three American authors were slated to perform a reading followed by a Q&A at the University. Emmy Perez, Rick Moody, and finally Junot Díaz, the rather unknown (at least in Denmark) author of Drown, a collection [...]
Also tagged Junot Díaz, Literature, Literaturhaus, Networking, University of CopenhagenHi all.
This weekly column is an attempt at creating some sort of loose “index” that’ll make things a bit easier to fathom. I’ll try to put together a brief run-down of interesting matter floating around in the media, this with an emphasis on the literary. What follows is basically a short blurp on each item, [...]